After Richard and I played this on 8 August I was keen to play again, this time as the Axis.
After five hours and some good rolls by me and some poor rolls by Richard at critical times (mainly associated with the attacks and determined defence of the big cities), the Soviets had run out of troops and the Axis were about to breakthrough in a big way.
It is funny that GMT label it as the German-Russian War as one of the fascinating things they point out in their background information is that there were so many different nationalities involved in the campaign, on both sides.
Sounds good fun.
ReplyDeleteThanks. It's a bit hard to do AARs for boardgames as compared to miniature games - cardboard just doesn't have the same aesthetic qualities of nicely painted figures. That said, the map and counters of the game looked great.
DeleteI've never played this game. I recently bought GMT's new Ostfront game, Dark Valley, about the whole Russian campaign, and am looking forward to playing it. Like you I love tabletop miniatures but I have a soft spot for boardgames. I just wish I had opponents.
ReplyDeleteI should get myself educated about Vassal, I suppose.
Cheers,
Michael
I played a whole lot of SPI games back in the 1970s and 1980s (Napoleon's Last Battles is still one of my favourites and still plays well - if only I could come up with a way to seamlessly move the battles to the tabletop... I'm working on it). I played War in the East and War in Europe many times (used to take over the house with maps being laid on any flat surface i could commandeer). The Dark Valley game looks good from my quick look at the material on their website.
ReplyDeleteAs for Vassal, I've heard about such things, but apart from looking at something for Empire in Arms (a great Napoleonic diplomacy game) and getting scared off I haven't investigated. I'm lucky to have a face to face opponent. The challenge is time and space. Vassal could help with the space problem, but time is still an issue (particularly if you need to be logged on at the same time as the other players).